ABSTRACT
In 1843 the newly established Greek kingdom imposed a stamp duty on dowry contracts calculated on the value of the dowry described. Although this change has been little discussed in Greek historiography and is often seen simply as an attempt by the bankrupt Greek state to raise revenue, its effect was near revolutionary. In the first place, it added a significant cost to marriage arrangements, possibly forcing many poorer Greeks to avoid notarised dowry contracts. Since the law mandated that only notarised dowry contracts were enforceable in the new Greek courts, such an outcome would have been particularly detrimental to women who owned their dowry but did not control it. Second, while dowry contracts throughout the Ottoman period usually described the goods and land assigned rather than their value, the stamp duty forced the reconceptualisation of the dowry in monetary terms. Alongside other social transformations in the early nineteenth century, this development led to the eventual monetarisation of the dowry and the increasing alienation of the dowry from its principal owner, the wife, to the benefit of her husband. Although this was a long process, the establishment of the stamp duty helped transform how Greeks perceived the dowry, from a set of productive properties to a monetary value. This chapter will discuss the dowry and other marriage payments prior to the establishment of the modern Greek state and the impact of the new laws, and especially of the stamp duty, following Greece’s independence in 1829, with a particular focus on the effects of such laws on the composition of the dowry.
